JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS最新文献

Predominant theories of subject formation have focused on the ways that people challenge and subvert the norms they live within or how they inhabit and consolidate those norms. This article shows how these accounts and their theoretical inheritors have directed scholarly attention toward the ways that subjects work to achieve coherence with their norms—either by subverting those norms (Judith Butler) or inhabiting them (Saba Mahmood)—thereby obscuring forms of subjectivity in which such coherence is impossible. Through ethnographic research and discourse analysis of a popular women’s prayer book alongside analysis of Jewish legal texts, this article conducts a case study of contemporary American Ultra-Orthodox women’s prayer practices, demonstrating how the pious woman is caught between two totalizing and incompatible discourses of piety. She cannot achieve coherence with the norms that guide and discipline her, nor can she subvert them. This analysis thereby brings to light an under-theorized form of religious subjectivity: the incoherent subject.

Ackermann argues that recent changes in French laïcité, such as the law that prohibits wearing conspicuous religious symbols, although introduced to preserve national unity, actually destroy such unity and split in two the lives of those who wear the symbols. Visible religious expression, he argues, can indicate a desire to connect while the privatization of religion is characteristic of fundamentalism. He uses examples from Jewish sacred writings, the lives of important figures, and his family to direct his arguments to Jewish religious fundamentalists. To critical theorists of secularism, he argues that laic France does not separate state and religion but produces a type of religion, one that can only flourish in private; for example, a type of Judaism more like Christianity in its separation of inside and outside, subjectivity and world. He draws on Emmanuel Levinas’s view that subjectivity is not private but fundamentally in relation to others, joining scholars Catherine Chalier, Delphine Horvilleur, and Rachid Benzine, who have used the thought of Derrida, Levinas, and other theorists to argue against fundamentalism, and whose Levinasian–Derridian understanding of subjectivity can be seen to overcome Talal Asad’s concern that secularism is tied to neo-Stoic distancing from religious beliefs and passions.

This article challenges Reinhold Niebuhr’s depiction of Augustine as a political realist. Although Augustine was a realist concerning the forces that shape political life, he was an idealist in his social ethics. He considered the Sermon on the Mount relevant for political action, and he thought the same principles should govern Christians in both private and public life. To defend this interpretation, I analyze Augustine’s treatments of war, capital punishment, and torture. I then contrast his ethics with two kingdoms theology and the theory of dirty hands. A final section analyzes his understanding of role-specific responsibilities. As I argue, Augustine does not offer a general approbation of harsh practices; he endorses benevolent severity, according to which external harshness can express internal love.

Saṃvega, a moralized emotional state that embodies the Buddha’s teachings on suffering, initiates the beginning of a person’s ethical self-transformation. While existing scholarship focuses on the scripturally prescribed role of saṃvega in deepening aversion to the world and the desire for enlightenment, this textualist perspective overlooks its localized interpretations and lived experiences. This article explores how popular understandings of saṃvega are intertwined with ethical concerns related to everyday life in Myanmar, extending beyond renunciatory impulses to include remorse for unwholesome deeds and empathy for others’ suffering. Focusing on Myanmar’s Free Funeral Service Movement, this article shows how Burmese Buddhists transform encounters with death into opportunities to cultivate these ethical sensibilities. This article contributes to Theravāda studies by demonstrating how embodied moral emotions, like saṃvega, bridge textual traditions and lived religious practices. It also highlights the centrality of an ethnographic approach in understanding Buddhist everyday ethics.

While ease of access to information curated by artificial intelligence (AI) can be advantageous, it jeopardizes collaborative investigational practices central to virtue theory as a whole, the cultivation of prudence in particular, and a Christian notion of God's participation in the moral life. A relational setting actualizes prudence, which assists a moral agent in determining the right means for achieving a goal for action. Interpersonal discourse, the identification of moral exemplars, and the gift of grace are ways in which Catholic virtue theory presents the encounter of the other as necessary for individual prudential development. AI can offer ready access to resources, yet this access may contribute to a false portrayal of the individual as self-sufficient. Technology should present a springboard, not a replacement, for the true encounter of the other. The negative impacts of neglecting to seek counsel within true relationships are many. For example, without participation in interrelational conversation, one risks failing to habituate humility, a prerequisite for prudence, as well as failing to hold oneself accountable to social responsibility. Empathizing with another's perspective is necessary for identifying the potential for moral improvement in oneself. In turn, shared experiences open the door to effective fraternal correction from other members of a community. This paper will explore the insights of theological anthropology and virtue theory, which illuminate the necessity of an authentic discourse with “the Other” for the cultivation of prudence, as such encounters benefit all participating parties. Toward this end, this paper will utilize resources within the work of Emmanuel Levinas on the significance of the encounter of the other and the work of Edith Stein on the communally contextualized development of the individual, the relationship of the individual before God, and the divine gift of individuality that necessitates relationality.

Some argue that if we develop machines with artificial general intelligence (“AGIs”), we might not be able to determine whether these machines are unfeeling tools without moral standing or instead conscious beings deserving of moral consideration. I reflect on this possibility from the standpoint of Christian theism. I argue, first, that Christian theists should be especially uncertain about the moral standing of hypothetical AGIs. Second, the prospect of AGIs of uncertain moral standing poses risks that are unacceptable from a Christian perspective. I give special attention to a risk we face if, out of moral precaution, we operate on the assumption that AGIs are conscious and have moral standing. If this assumption is incorrect, the precautionary approach could result in a lamentable attenuation of the bonds of mutual concern that Christians view as essential to our collective flourishing.

Recent scholarship in religious ethics signals the importance of considering how the virtues are pursued and embodied in everyday human lives and practices, as well as attending to experiences of virtue that have previously been overlooked. This essay argues that experiences of love in autistic persons can enrich our understanding of the nature and scope of virtuous love as understood in the Christian tradition. In making this argument, I develop an account of autistic love that draws on scholarship from psychology and anthropology, first-person narratives published by autistic authors, and a qualitative study conducted at Duquesne University. These sources point toward the existence of a comprehensive and generalized love that is rooted in an understanding of oneself as profoundly interconnected with the surrounding world. I conclude this essay by considering how this sort of love, while not always explicitly Christian, can nevertheless inform two contemporary debates in Christian virtue ethics.